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Zouk
Zouk is a musical movement and dance pioneered by the French Antillean band Kassav' in the early 1980s. It was originally characterized by a fast tempo (120–145 bpm), a percussion-driven rhythm, and a loud horn section. Musicians from Martinique and Guadeloupe eventually added MIDI instrumentation to their compas style, which developed into a genre called zouk-love. Zouk-love is effectively the French Lesser Antilles' compas,Popular Musics of the Non Western World. Peter Manuel, New York Oxford University Press, 1988, p74 and it gradually became indistinguishable from compas. Zouk béton The original fast carnival style of zouk, best represented by the band Kassav', became known as "zouk béton", "zouk chiré", or "zouk hard". Zouk béton is considered a synthesis of various French Antillean dance music styles of the 20th century, including kadans, konpa, and biguine. See also * Brazilian Zouk * Music of Latin America * Music of Martinique * Music of Guadeloupe ...
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Brazilian Zouk
Brazilian Zouk is a partner dance which began in Brazil during the early 1990s. Brazilian Zouk evolved from the partner dance known as the Lambada. Over time, Zouk dancers have experimented and incorporated other styles of music into such as R'n'B, pop, hip hop and contemporary. History Brazilian Zouk evolved from the partner dance known as the Lambada. As the Lambada music genre went out of fashion, Lambada dancers turned to Zouk (from the francophone, Caribbean Islands) as their music of choice. It was this transition that birthed the dance known as Brazilian Zouk. The term "Brazilian Zouk" was adopted in order to distinguish the dance style from the musical genre. Nowadays the term "Zouk" is commonly used to refer to the "Brazilian Zouk" dance style. Features Brazilian Zouk is a dance with well-defined basic steps and rhythmic patterns. The representation of these steps and rhythmic patterns varies depending on the substyle of Zouk. The overall plasticity of the movemen ...
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Music Of Martinique
The music of Martinique has a heritage which is intertwined with that of its sister island, Guadeloupe. Despite their small size, the islands have created a large popular music industry, which gained in international renown after the success of zouk music in the later 20th century. Zouk's popularity was particularly intense in France, where the genre became an important symbol of identity for Martinique and Guadeloupe.Ledesma and Scaramuzzo, pgs. 289–303 Zouk's origins are in the folk music of Martinique and Guadeloupe, especially Martinican chouval bwa, and Guadeloupan gwo ka. There's also notable influence of the pan-Caribbean calypso tradition and Haitian kompa. Folk music Carnival is a very important festival, known as Vaval on Martinique. Music plays a vital role, with Martinican big bands marching across the island. Vaval declined following World War II, bouncing back with new band formats and new traditions only in the 1980s. Like Guadeloupe, Martinique features pa ...
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Kassav'
Kassav', also alternatively spelled Kassav, is a French Caribbean band that originated from Guadeloupe in 1979. The band's musical style is rooted in the Guadeloupean gwoka rhythm, as well as the Martinican tibwa and Mendé rhythms. Regarded as one of the most influential bands in 20th-century French West Indies music, Kassav is often credited with pioneering the zouk musical genre. Their musical evolution is a synthesis of cadence-lypso and compas traditions. Despite initial resistance from French record labels, which disparaged their early works as excessively "too ethnic," Kassav' tenaciously persevered, collaborating with various West Indian music producers and distributing their music through Sonodisc. The term "kassav" in creole denotes a type of cassava pancake. The band's inception can be traced to Pierre-Edouard Décimus and Fréddy Marshall, members of the Guadeloupean ensemble Les Vikings, who aspired to innovate the island's traditional music by amalgamating it ...
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Zouk
Zouk is a musical movement and dance pioneered by the French Antillean band Kassav' in the early 1980s. It was originally characterized by a fast tempo (120–145 bpm), a percussion-driven rhythm, and a loud horn section. Musicians from Martinique and Guadeloupe eventually added MIDI instrumentation to their compas style, which developed into a genre called zouk-love. Zouk-love is effectively the French Lesser Antilles' compas,Popular Musics of the Non Western World. Peter Manuel, New York Oxford University Press, 1988, p74 and it gradually became indistinguishable from compas. Zouk béton The original fast carnival style of zouk, best represented by the band Kassav', became known as "zouk béton", "zouk chiré", or "zouk hard". Zouk béton is considered a synthesis of various French Antillean dance music styles of the 20th century, including kadans, konpa, and biguine. See also * Brazilian Zouk * Music of Latin America * Music of Martinique * Music of Guadeloupe ...
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Gwo Ka
Gwo ka is an Antillean Creole term for big drum. Alongside ''Gwotanbou'', simply ''Ka'' or ''Banboula'' (archaic), it refers to both a family of hand drums and the music played with them, which is a major part of Guadeloupean folk music. Moreover, the term is occasionally found in reference to the small, flat-bottomed tambourine (''tanbou d'bas'') played in kadri music, or even simply to drum (''tanbou'') in general. The Gwo Ka musical practice emerged in the seventeenth century, during the transatlantic slave trade Seven simple drum patterns form the basis of gwo ka music, on which the drummers build rhythmic improvisations. Different sizes of drums provide the foundation and its flourishes. The largest, the boula, plays the central rhythm while the smaller ''maké'' (or markeur) embellishes upon it, inter-playing with dancers, audience, or singer. Gwo ka singing is usually guttural, nasal, and rough, though it can also be bright and smooth, and is accompanied by upl ...
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Compas
Compas (; ; ), also known as konpa or kompa, is a modern méringue dance music genre of Haiti. The genre was created by Nemours Jean-Baptiste following the creation of Ensemble Aux Callebasses in 1955, which became Ensemble Nemours Jean-Baptiste in 1957. The frequent tours of the many Haitian bands have cemented the style in all the Caribbean. Therefore, compas is the main music of several countries such as Dominica and the French Antilles. Whether it is called zouk, where French Antilles artists of Martinique and Guadeloupe have taken it, or konpa in places where Haitian artists have toured, this méringue style is influential in part of the Caribbean, Portugal, Cape Verde, France, part of Canada, and South and North America. Nemours Jean-Baptiste (1918–1985) was an important figure in the creation and popularization of ''konpa dirèk''. Born in Port-au-Prince, Jean-Baptiste grew up in a musically inclined family, and his early exposure to various forms of music shaped h ...
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Cadence-lypso
Cadence-lypso is a fusion of cadence rampa from Haiti, Jazz, Blues and calypso music, calypso from Trinidad and Tobago that has also spread to other English speaking countries of the Caribbean. Originated in the 1970s by the Dominican band Exile One, it spread and became popular in the dance clubs around the Creole world and Africa as well as the French Antilles. Genres: Caribbean and Latin America. Gordon Henderson (musician), Gordon Henderson is the leader and founder of Exile One, and the one who coined the term ''cadence-lypso''. Performing the Caribbean Experience. History Dominican contemporary music, that is the music played by the dance bands from the 1950s, has played a very important role in Dominica national life. Dominica musical landscape has seen many changes in the intervening period from 1950. In the forties and fifties, there were bands such as the Casimir Brothers of Roseau. The Swinging Stars emerged at the end of the fifties. Their music was a dance-oriente ...
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Martinique
Martinique ( ; or ; Kalinago language, Kalinago: or ) is an island in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the eastern Caribbean Sea. It was previously known as Iguanacaera which translates to iguana island in Carib language, Kariʼnja. A part of the French West Indies (Antilles), Martinique is an Overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department and region and a single territorial collectivity of France. It is a part of the European Union as an outermost region within the special territories of members of the European Economic Area, and an associate member of the Caribbean Community, CARICOM, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) but is not part of the Schengen Area or the European Union Customs Union. The currency in use is the euro. It has been a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 2021 for its entire land and sea territory. In ...
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Music Of Haiti
The music of Haiti combines a wide range of influences drawn from the diverse population that has settled on this Caribbean island. It often has hints of French, African rhythms, Spanish elements and others who have inhabited the island of Hispaniola and minor native Taino influences. Styles of music unique to the nation of Haiti include music derived from rara music, rara parading music, twoubadou ''ballads'', mini-jazz ''rock bands'', rasin movement, Haitian hip hop, hip hop Creòle, the wildly popular compas, and méringue as its basic rhythm. Haitian music is influenced mostly by European colonial ties and African migration (through slavery). In the case of European colonization, musical influence has derived primarily from the French. One of Haiti's musical traditions is known to outsiders simply as compas. But in the former non-standardized Haitian Creole, Haitians identify it variously as ''compa, conpa, and konpa-dirék''. Regardless of its various spellings, compas refer ...
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Biguine
Biguine ( , ; ) is a rhythmic dance and music style that originated from Saint-Pierre, Martinique in the 19th century. It fuses West African traditional music genres, such as Bélé, with 19th-century French ballroom dance steps. History Two main types of French antillean biguine can be identified based on the instrumentation in contemporary musical practice, called the ''drum biguine'' and the ''orchestrated biguine''. Each of these refers to characteristics of a specific origin. The drum biguine, or ''bidgin bèlè'' in Creole, comes from a series of bèlè dances performed since early colonial times by the slaves who inhabited the great sugar plantations. Musically, the bidgin bèlè can be distinguished from the orchestrated biguine in the following ways: its instrumentation (cylindrical single-membraned drum (bèlè) and the rhythm sticks ( tibwa); the call-and-response singing style; the soloist's improvisation, and the nasal voice quality. According to a study by Rosema ...
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Cadence Rampa
Cadence rampa (, ), or simply kadans, is a dance music and modern méringue popularized in the Caribbean by the virtuoso Haitian sax player Webert Sicot in the early 1960s. Cadence rampa was one of the sources of cadence-lypso. Genres: Caribbean and Latin America. Cadence and compas are two names for the same Haitian modern méringue. Ethnology Cadence rampa literally means ''rampart rhythm''. History Webert Sicot left Nemours Jean-Baptiste's compas band and called his music cadence to differentiate it from compas especially when he took it abroad, and so the rivalry between Sicot and Nemours created these names. Sicot created a new rhythm, ''cadence rampa'', to counter compas, but it was only in a spirit of competition. The rhythm of cadence rampa was identical to compas except for the addition of the second drum that sounded on every fourth beat. In the 1930s several biguine artists from Martinique and Guadeloupe moved to France, where they achieved great popularity in Paris, ...
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